EMMA LUCY BRAUN

Emma Lucy Braun, while not a staff member of the Pine Mountain Settlement School, spent many hours in and around Pine Mountain Settlement School working on botanical and biological research associated with the forests and soils of the area. As a botanist, ecologist and conservationist she was a trail-blazer. The research she engaged in Ohio and in Kentucky and surrounding areas led to her ground-breaking work in plant ecology and to the development of plant ecology as an academic discipline.

Her mentoring of students and her work in the field with her students was uncommon for women faculty of her day and nearly as uncommon as her choice of a profession. A disciplined and demanding professor at the University of Cincinnati, she reportedly had thirteen MA students and one PhD student in the time she was active on the faculty. Nine of these students were women. She was a pioneer for women in the sciences.

Emma Lucy Braun was born in Cincinnati in 1889. She came from a family that shared an interest in geography, forest ecology, and botany and both she and her sister were encouraged in their interests in the natural world. Her sister Annette Braun became a recognized entomologist, or more correctly, a microlepidopterist. As an expert in her field, Annette was often consulted for her knowledge of moths. While they were children the two young girls accompanied their parents for walks in the forest where they were expected to know the names of the wild flowers, insects, trees and other forest life. This early introduction to forest ecology stuck.

The two were well prepared for their later academic work. Both Lucy and Annette attended the University of Cincinnati. Lucy received her bachelor’s degree in 1910 and her Master’s degree in geology in 1912. Her Ph.D. in Botany from the same institution was awarded in 1914. Following the receipt of her undergraduate degree she was awarded a teaching assistantship and by 1927 she had advanced to associate professor of botany, a position she filled until 1946 when she advanced to full professor. She continued to teach for two more years then retired so she could engage in more field work, although her fieldwork prior to her retirement was legend. For example, it was reported that, in total, she logged some 65,000 miles in her exploration of the deciduous forests of the Eastern United States, most of that in the company of her older sister, Annette.

Her publication record is as extensive as her walkabouts and an accounting of her publications follows this brief biography. She authored some 180 publications including articles and books. As founder of the Cincinnati chapter of the Wildflower Preservation Society, she also served as the editor of their journal. She is easily the authority for the vascular flora of Ohio and southeastern Kentucky and earned a reputation as one of the top ecologists in the United States. Most of her monographic publication came at the end of her life, but she continued to contribute to the literature in her field until her death at the age of 81. Even late in her life, she continued her fieldwork tramping over the terrain of the southern Appalachians and was still leading field trips at the age of 80, one year before she died.

The extensive work that Braun completed was well-recognized by her colleagues as early as 1933 when she was elected as the first woman president of the Ohio Academy of Science. In 1950 the Ecological Society of America honored her with the presidency of that organization. She was also responsible for furthering the land conservation movement. Her advocacy for land conservation in Ohio resulted in the preservation of some 10,000 acres and the land trust she established known as the Dr. Lucy Braun Memorial Fund and managed by the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History Museum continues to add land to her initial preservation effort.

In Kentucky she has given her name to new species of plants and her careful exploration has given the area the comprehensive title An Annotated Catalog of the Spermatophytes of Kentucky, published in 1943. The length of her research studies set the model for the analysis of the changes in a plant system over a specific period of time. Her vegetation science comparing the flora in particular geographic areas with the flora from a century earlier was so thorough that many hold her model as unmatched even today. She continues to influence the process by which regional changes in flora are analyzed over time. Accompanied by her camera, Lucy Braun also left a visual record of the natural flora in the areas she visited, an endeavor that is of increasing importance as climate change challenges many species. Her photographs are supplemented by an extensive herbarium of some 11,891 specimens which she began to gather while she was still in high school. Most of her photographs and her herbarium are held by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

On March 25, 1935, she was invited to speak to the Garden Club of Kentucky where she inspired the creation of the “Save Kentucky’s Primeval Forest League”, which addressed the rapid decimation of virgin forest in Kentucky, It was a topic of great concern for Katherine Pettit, Pine Mountain’s early co-director, who fought to retain the forest that, in part, comprises Lilley Cornett Woods. Also, Braun and Pettit devoted considerable energy to save a 2,500-acre site that was later included in the Cumberland National Forest. Braun, as adept as Pettit in bringing advocates on board, made appeals to Alvin Barkley, Kentucky’s well-known senator, and A.B. Chandler, the Governor of Kentucky at the time.

Nationally she attempted to enlist Eleanor Roosevelt and the U.S. Forest Service as advocates for the preservation of old growth forests. She was only partially successful in the face of the timber and coal interests in the state of Kentucky and the Cumberland National Forest tract was eventually clearcut, with the U.S, Forest Service claiming that they could not intervene in the pursuit of the forest land and the Save Kentucky’s Primeval Forest League claiming that they could not establish a purchase agreement with the two industries.

No matter, many of her ideas were still alive when the Ohio Legislature in 1970 passed a Natural Areas Bill and when in 1967 the prairie preserve she sought to establish became the 6,000-acre E. Lucy Braun-Lynx Prairie Preserve, a National Park Service landmark was formed.

Obstacles physical or political were no deterrent for the Braun sisters, and especially Lucy Braun. Like other women environmentalists such as Rachel Carson and Wilma Dykeman, Braun, in 1931, warned that “destruction of beauty and vandalism are the result of ignorance, thoughtlessness or defiance of the law and the rights of others.” And, further, “As a result of man’s continuing destruction of his natural environment by the plow, lumbering, urban sprawl and ever enlarging highways, few natural habitats will remain shortly …”

An excerpt of her talk for the Garden Club of Kentucky on March 29, 1935, follows:

Down in the southern part of Perry County, on Lynn Fork of Leatherwood Creek, is one of the most beautiful tracts of virgin forest I have ever seen. For some time, I had heard of the Big Poplar of Perry County, and it was while on the quest for this that I saw this magnificent forest. It occupies the Left Fork of Lynn Fork, and for some two miles, we walked through untouched forest, following a faint trail which led to the Big Poplar, a gigantic tulip tree nearly 24 feet in circumference. It took five people with arms outstretched to reach around the tree. This gigantic trunk towered upward, unbranched, to such heights that it was impossible to distinguish the leaves of the crown. Nowhere east of California have I seen such a gigantic tree. And this was only one of many large trees. This forest contains a variety of trees — tulip poplar, oaks, beech, sugar maple, hemlock, all large. Often times we see tracts of so-called virgin forests, from which this or that tree has been removed or if the canopy is intact, with the undergrowth ruined by grazing or by rooting hogs; but not so here. Nothing had been disturbed; the luxuriance of the undergrowth is beyond description. There is a wealth of herbaceous plants, and beautiful wildflowers everywhere. The whole place is awe-inspiring in its beauty and grandeur . . . Very few virgin forest areas remain. Of the original forest of Kentucky, less than two percent remains in such conditions that it can be classified as old-growth; and only a small part of this is really virgin. The Lynn Fork is one of these . . . Nowhere in the whole world is there the equal in beauty and magnificence of our eastern deciduous forest. It is unexcelled. And in Kentucky and Tennessee, this deciduous forest reached its superlative development. By saving a piece of Kentucky’s virgin forest, you would be saving a forest outstanding of its kind . . . We must act quickly before it is cut-the-timber rights are held by the Leatherwood Lumber Company, who are now cutting in the next branch . . . By all means, this project is worthy of your greatest effort. Nowhere, not even in the Great Smoky Mountains, have I seen a more beautiful forest or larger trees. Let us work together to save this area..

As a close friend of Katherine Pettit, Lucy and her sister had an open invitation to stay at the School while completing their research in the area. They also stayed at the home of Pine Mountain student Mable Mullins and David and Jack Martin in Patridge, Kentucky at the headwaters of the Cumberland river.

Following the retirement of Katherine Pettit from Pine Mountain in 1931, the Brauns kept up a lively correspondence with Pettit who shared many of their environmental concerns and the courage to be politically active. “Save the Big Trees” was a campaign the three adamantly supported.

GALLERY

Full text of: “Save the Big Trees,” Lucy Braun talk before the Garden Club of Kentucky, Millerburg, KY, March 29, 1935.

“Save the Big Trees” Lucy Braun Talk before the Garden Club of Kentucky. 1935, p.1. [braun_lucy_trees001.jpg]

“Save the Big Trees” Lucy Braun Talk before the Garden Club of Kentucky. 1935, p.2. [braun_lucy_trees002.jpg]

“Save the Big Trees” Lucy Braun Talk before the Garden Club of Kentucky. 1935, p.3. [braun_lucy_trees003.jpg]

MAPS AND PHOTOGRAPHS OF “THE BIG TREES”

The note on the back of photograph # 3 reads: “In Dean’s Trees of Indiana on page 170 he gives the following from the Indiana Geological report. 6:70 -1875: ‘I measured four poplar trees that grow within a few feet of each other: the largest was thirty-eight ft. in circumference, three ft. from the ground; 120 ft. high ; 65 ft. to the first limb. The others were respectively 18 1/2 , 18 and 17 ft. in circumference at 3 ft. from ground.’ ”

Any display, publication, or public use must credit the Pine Mountain Settlement School, Pine Mountain, KY. Copyright retained by the creators of certain items in the collection, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Donor

“Our Fragile Earth,” Morehead State University Environmental Series, Office of Public Information.